Fix It! Grammar Review, Level 5
My review today is for the Fix It! Grammar, Level 5, from the Institute for Excellence in Writing. I received this product free of charge for the purpose of this review.
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Our family has been using the writing curriculum from the Institute for Excellence in Writing, and this year we decided to try the grammar portion of their curriculum. Throughout our school year we have been working on Level 4, and so we are familiar with the format of this curriculum.
However, I was warned when I purchased the original version that maybe I should wait since a completely new format of the Fix It! Grammar would be released soon. I went ahead with the original books since we needed to get started.
I will briefly describe the curriculum, then I will show some of the main differences between the old and new versions. I believe this will be helpful for those who may have used the IEW grammar in the past and wonder if the change is significant.
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How the Fix It! Grammar Program Works
The idea is simple.
The curriculum presents a sentence that is written incorrectly, and the student is to Fix It! But that is not actually all that is involved.
The student also must use proper editing marks to fix the problems. These are typical editing marks used in all proofreading situations—probably like you learned in high school grammar yourself!
Once they have used the proofreading marks and edited the sentence for errors, the students must mark the sentence with correct parts of speech and parts of the sentence, such as prepositional phrases, clauses, correct sentence openers, and then they evaluate the sentence itself.
Next, the student is to look up the highlighted word and write down the dictionary definition. This is how they expand their vocabulary.
After this they must rewrite the sentence! At this point they are just writing the corrected sentence, omitting the proofreading notation and parts of speech.
Simple Process
So…while the concept is very simple: fix and rewrite a sentence, the actual practice is a little more in-depth.
I know it says you can do it in like 15 minutes a day, but we are slow, and it always takes my boys longer! Maybe that’s because grammar is not our strong suit.
Honestly, the appeal to the Fix It! Grammar program was the simple approach. Turns out it’s just grammar, lol, but the little by little every day concept still works better for us than a huge lesson!
Here’s the thing: my boys don’t love grammar, but they don’t complain about this one much, so I feel like it’s a good fit for us. Our boys are in the 9th and 10th grades.
Comparing the Old and New Fix It! Grammar Programs
From what I can tell, the main changes have been a reworking of the format of the curriculum. It’s pretty much the same content, but the new format makes it way easier to read! Whereas before, one page would contain five lessons, now each lesson uses one page. I just feel like this makes it less overwhelming visually.
They provide space for writing out the new sentence in the book. It’s just easier to read in the new book, and they have also rewritten some of the instructions to clarify.
Fix It! Grammar Cards
In the old books, the grammar/parts of speech cards came within the book, and you could cut them out and laminate them. With the new cards, you get a boxed set of cards, which are now color-coded and already laminated.
I really like the new, clean look of the grammar cards.
Comparing the cards is not apples to apples, though. They have updated the information on the cards themselves, and while I like how clean they now look, I miss some of the detail from the old cards. The new set covers all of the levels, and the old sets were more specific to each book. I plan to keep the old cards for reference.
Old and New!
Institute for Excellence in Writing
My Conclusions
Fix It! Grammar works for us! I have yet to find a grammar that feels like you’re eating ice cream sundaes! Grammar is one of those things that my kids hate, but they know that have to learn it! I hate typos and wrong grammar usage, so they’ve figured out that they have to learn grammar so they don’t get laughed at! The technicalities do bog us down, so we appreciate the more bite sized chunks that Fix It! Grammar provides.
I’m sure you’ll also like to read all of the reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew on the Fix It! Grammar.
Click the link (image) below to take you to see more reviews!
Every now and then, I think about writing an illustrated grammar guide with grammar cops that give tickets and tow things away. As an example, the grammar police would tow away unnecessary apostrophes in the possessive form of its (as opposed to it’s, which is read as it is) or in plurals. Maybe it should be animated with cop car noises and running punctuation? (this is very much in the brainstorming stage!)
That sounds like a lot of fun for younger kids!
I think that I posted about creating an illustrated grammar book featuring the grammar police towing away bad punctuation that’s illegally parked. One of these days, I will write a grammar police book. Great review!
This definitely sounds like a wonderful resource for homeschoolers and teachers alike. I loved your in-depth review..
Thank you!